


shapechangers

by recycledstars



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Complete, F/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2575373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/pseuds/recycledstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Election Night</i>, some things are worked out, with varying degrees of clothing and success.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There was a [tumblr meme](http://recycledstars.tumblr.com/post/101452352938) and [a prompt](http://recycledstars.tumblr.com/post/101924690398) ( _mac x will, first night together post engagement_ ) then there was this? In ~~three~~ four parts because, well. It grew two (four?) heads. Fair warning, part i does not ... culminate, in a manner of speaking.

After they’re off the air and she’s sent everyone home for a few hours she goes to find him where she knows he’ll be: in his office watching whatever’s on ESPN. It’s quiet on the floor for the first time all day and she watches him for a minute, enjoying the silence, before she interrupts.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she says, leaning against the doorframe.

“And?” 

“An _orgy_? With college football games on TV?” 

“And shoes,” he repeats. “Hanging from the trees. I know what you like.” 

“Why are there televisions and _trees_ in the same –”

“Don’t overthink it.”

“I was thinking about that too.” She looks down at her hand, twists the ring around her finger. It’s too big and one day she’s going to have to tell him that but right now it feels like some kind of fucking metaphor and she can’t.

“I thought you might be.”

“Aren’t you?” 

“No –”

She looks up at that, makes a face to say she doesn't believe him.

“– because I don’t know what’s meant to happen next. And I don’t know if you noticed, but I was sorta making it up as I went along.”

“Really? Your proposal was so seamless, I couldn’t tell.”

He ignores her sarcasm, is still glib, “I think that worked out pretty well as a strategy, I vote we stick with it.”

“For tonight?”

“Forever feels like it’d be a stretch.”

She nods. “There are some things to work out.”

“I know that. Mac.” He says her name and his tone shifts to sincere, “I don’t know what’s meant to happen next. I just know … I don’t want to waste anymore time.” 

“But less broadly speaking?” 

“You mean right now?” 

Mac nods.

“Whatever you want to happen, we can do that.”

“Honestly?” She closes her eyes. “I want to sleep for at least a week.”

He checks his watch. “You might steal four hours.”

“Take me home?”

“You honestly think that after six years, I get you in my bed and we sleep?”

He meets her in the doorway and they smile at each other and she thinks on that, on being able to reach out and smooth the collar of his shirt, rest her hand at his neck, guide him to kiss her. (And then lean against the wall, pull him against her, his hands on her face, her back, her hips, her – they have to stop.)

She pushes him back with a palm to his shoulder. “ _Your_ bed?”

“I thought you’d say no to right here.”

“You told me earlier that I looked cultured. Not _been to Europe_ cultured, _by science_ cultured. I need to sleep and shower and wash my hair and … burn these clothes and these shoes are rubbing my heels.” She kicks up one foot and runs her finger around the back, wincing. “ _My_ bed. And more importantly, my bathroom, my closet.”

“I have no strong objections to where, it can be any or all three of those places.” 

He kisses her again and she wraps her arms around his neck and hugs him, just rests against him and tries not to cry.

 

 

 

Outside the storm has stopped. It’s eerie and still, light snow falling, the streets white. 

They stand in the street, waiting for a cab and she shivers so he pulls her against him. He feels her relax, a fist at his chest, nose nudging under his chin.

“I’ve missed you,” she says quietly. “And I’m in love with you.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.” She hugs him tighter. “But I didn’t say it before. And I haven’t in a long time but. Will, I only ever stopped saying it because I thought you didn’t want to hear it. I never stopped meaning it.”

“I know that too.” He rests his cheek against the crown of her head. “I never stopped loving you either.”

“Then you know,” she says, “That it’s been _hell_.”

And then she cries. MacKenzie, who hardly ever cries (and never like this or only like this in front of him) sobs against his shoulder for every day they’ve been apart and _this_ then, is _his_ penance. He hates that it’s him who’s caused her so much pain and he knows she hates that it’s her who hurt him so badly in the first place. So maybe if they just spend the rest of their lives making it up to each other then …

 _That’s_ his plan.

Every single day, he’ll just be sorry that he ever hurt her, he’ll just love her _more_ to make up for it and she’s already spent six years doing the same. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, voice still shaky with tears. She hides the words in his shoulder, embarrassed to be saying them at all. “Don’t leave me again. I couldn’t take it.”

“What makes you think I could?” he asks. Because there will never, ever be any danger of that.

 

 

 

He’s never been in her new apartment before. Everything looks different but it _feels_ more or less the same, MacKenzie-esque, all ordered mess and a weird mix of modern and homey, hard and somehow soft. He’s distractedly taking stock of the pictures on her walls while she locks the door behind them, looking-but-not-really-looking as he replays the conversation they’ve just had in the elevator.

(She held out her hand to examine it, ring and all. “You didn’t return it.” 

“No.”

“That was over a year ago.”

“You said you liked it.”

And she’d looked at him like she couldn’t quite decide how to best tell him he was a prize idiot. _Her_ prize idiot. But still.

“Why now?” she’d asked. 

He had kissed her, which wasn’t really an answer.)

And now the truth is bothering him. That maybe now is because she finally stopped pushing back when he was pushing her away. Still. He didn’t return it. Because as soon as she said _that’s the ring that’ll do it_ it had felt like a good investment.

So _now_ is really just _long overdue_ and maybe he should take his own advice and not overthink it. For hours all he’s wanted is to get her alone, properly, in private, and now that they _are_ neither of them seems to have any idea what to do about it. 

They watch each other for a long moment in the hall, her leaning against the door. She still looks a little like she’s been crying. (And like he’s been kissing her – her shirt is half untucked.)

“Is it silly?” she asks, half-rhetorically. “That this is awkward?”

“This is awkward?”

“Well." She tilts her head to one side. "Just a little.”

“I would have said surreal.”

“That too.”

Mac extends her hand, pulls him closer, sighs into his mouth when he presses her up against the door. She’s smiling and they’re kissing so he can _feel_ her smiling and –

 _Fuck_ , he should have made her this happy a long time ago. (To say nothing of the small miracle that _he_ can make her this happy at all.)

She sheds her coat and kicks off her shoes and they make a bit of a mess of the floor between the door and her bedroom shedding their more superficial clothing until she’s shirtless against the wall and he’s kneeling to kiss her stomach (baseball injuries be damned), hands hiking up her skirt a little at a time. 

She stills them with hers, tugs him back to standing. 

“It’s been a long day,” she says, taking his hands and resting them on the naked curve of her back. 

“Long couple of months,” he agrees.

“That too.” She looks down at their feet, rests her bowed forehead against his chest for a moment. “So.” She looks up. “Do you mind if I shower first?”

“I have a feeling you’re about to add ‘alone’ which makes me mind slightly more than not at all.”

“Not the first time. You can shower with me later, I promise.”

“Put that in your wedding vows.”

“For better or worse, in the shower and on the kitchen counter?”

“Works for me.”

(Her too, if he remembers rightly, and it’s one of the only ways she’s good in the kitchen, which is also fine by him.)

“Thank you.” She runs her hands from his shoulders to the back of his neck, holds his cheeks in her palms as she kisses him. 

“Hang on,” he says, when she extricates herself to move toward the bathroom. 

He pulls her back and starts with his hands in her hair, works down, touches everywhere, greedy for six years worth of _this_ , her skin, how she _feels_ and the way she moves under his hands. 

(She’s going to shower and he’s going to have to think about the logical conclusion of all this touching for ten long minutes, so he wants to get as much in as possible before the drought.) 

And the way she _sounds_. No one has ever sounded like MacKenzie; she’s loud but she tries not to be which makes every fucking whimper feel like a victory, and she tries to be polite but she takes the Lord’s name in vain _a lot_ when she comes. (She says _God Will_ and yes, he feels like one. Then again, he always feels like what she tells him he is. _We can do better_ and Don Quixote and all that.)

He helps her out of the skirt, kisses and kisses and kisses her (mouth, neck, freckle on her shoulder that he’s always loved), reaches between her shoulders to unclasp her bra. 

That’s where she stops him, takes his hands and holds them both. Aside from the obvious disappointed kid with hand removed from cookie jar feeling, there’s another kind of heaviness to the moment he wishes they could shake. And her reservations are probably good ones, but he wants to tell her to ignore them anyway. 

(He wants her not to have them at all.)

“I’ll be quick,” she assures him.

“In the shower or –”

She narrows her eyes, but she smiles in spite of herself. 

“Will?” She squeezes his hand. “I love you.”

“I know.” He reaches up to help her with the necklace she’s struggling to remove. “Here.”

It falls into her palm and she watches it. 

“Thank you,” she says with double meaning. “It’s just … a lot, all at once.”

“I know.”

“Five minutes.”

She gave him six years, he can give her that.

 

 

 

He reaches for her and he has such grand plans when she crawls into bed beside him, is already hooked again on the way she gasps when he works his hand under her shirt, wants nothing more than to re-learn everything about her. And she kisses him like she has the same intentions, the full weight of shower-fresh MacKenzie pressed against him, warm and wet and hopefully in more places than one and –

She yawns, drops her mouth into the crook of his neck, lips warm against his skin.

Then he’s only half awake and she’s curling up beside him and they both fall asleep together, arms and legs and hopes and dreams entangled.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up to her, sitting beside him in bed and frowning at her laptop, reading glasses falling down her nose. (The glasses are a new thing, since she came back. And one day soon he’s going to tell her just how much they’ve been driving him crazy when combined with the little pinch in her brow she gets when she’s concentrating.)

He wakes up to _her_ and no matter what happens today is already a good day and fuck everything else. 

He kisses the first part of her he finds, which happens to be her elbow, and she laughs, nearly hitting him in the face when she jerks in surprise. “What’re you doing?”

“Last thing I remember, we were in the middle of something.” He rests his head against her side so he can see her screen. “Better question. What are _you_ doing?”

“Seeing if anything’s happened yet.”

“Leave it,” he says, discovering what of her is within reach under the covers. The answer is _mostly everything_ and, bonus round, she’s not wearing pants. He plays with the hem of her shirt. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you honestly telling me that _you_ don’t want to know what tawdry stories are being written about us right now?”

“I’m honestly saying that I desperately want to know and that it doesn’t matter. Give them a few more hours so they can write the really damaging ones.”

“A few hours?” She closes the lid of the Macbook and rests it, rather perilously, on a pile of half-read books on her nightstand. “How did you intend to pass that time?”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

She settles herself under the sheets beside him and he reaches out to remove her glasses, leans over her to place them on top of her computer. (And moves it to the floor, because he can see that disaster waiting to happen. He’s planning on some disruptive repetitive motion. Or _fucking her senseless_ , if she’ll let him call it that.)

Mac’s fingers stroke the side of his neck. “Well there’s the obvious,” she murmurs, low and hot against his ear. “Fifty states worth of final polling data to –”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

(He does, actually. They could probably break down the numbers state-by-state from bed _all day_ if she used that voice. She’ll _torture_ him with it in the control room now too.) 

“Then I’ll tell you that we have to double check our calls in all four hundred and thirty five congressional districts –” She shifts underneath him, stretches out so they’re eye-to-eye and folds one of her bare legs around his hip, smirking. “And thirty three senate races.”

The smirk on her mouth gives way to a surprised _oh_ when he reaches under her shirt, maps her chest with a particular goal in mind. She inhales sharply when he traces her nipple with his thumb.

She traps his hand there, under her shirt, stares at it then at him, her mouth closing in a thoughtful line.

“And.” Her tone is suddenly a lot less _fun_. “Charlie is going to call at any moment.”

Will tries to process that before saying anything stupid, because there are too many incongruous things happening at once. (His hand still under her shirt; her hand is still holding it there.)

“It’s nearly ten,” she adds, in defense of her statement. 

“I’m starting to feel like you don’t really want to do this.”

She catches the hand he pulls free of her body. “I do,” she promises. “It just … feels big.” 

He opens his mouth and she claps her hand over it when she realizes what she’s just said. “Don’t.”

“Okay,” is muffled by her palm, but she lets up so he adds, “But I’d like my self-restraint acknowledged.”

“I _meant_ –”

“I know what you meant.” 

He sighs, shifts to lie beside her, stares at her ceiling and tries not to sulk about it.

Mac turns on her side and prods his shoulder. “When you were little, did you ever want something so badly that you asked for it _months_ before your birthday? And then when you _got it_ , after spending so long wanting it, you realized you’d never thought about what it would be like to have it?”

“I’m going to need to know the specific childhood gift you’re comparing me to.”

“It was illustrative.” 

He looks at her sideways and she rolls her eyes. “When I was six I wanted a pair of roller skates, they were purple and covered glitter. When I got them I realized I didn’t know _how_ to roller skate.” 

Regrettably her childhood pre-dates home movies; he’s quite sure the learning curve would have been entertaining viewing. 

“Well I know you know _how_ to –”

“Will.” 

“I’m your purple roller skates.”

“And I can’t believe you’re really here,” she admits quietly.

“I know that feeling.” 

It’s definitely a bit of a mindfuck. Yesterday morning he was waking her up where she’d fallen asleep at her desk, as far away as ever. And now. He lifts his arm and she folds herself around him, head on his shoulder. 

“I’m really here,” he assures her.

“ _We’re_ really here,” she amends, smoothing his shirt with her palm. “And I’m sure I’ll get used to it all. But for now, _this_ , sex, it just feels –”

“Big.”

She shifts until her arms are folded on this chest, her head resting on her hands. “Like there’s a lot resting on it, yeah.”

No one else, forever, all things going according to plan and add on the six years: they’re older and unpracticed with each other and –

He gets where she’s coming from. 

Still.

“ _This_ is the part you think we’re going to fuck up?” He gives her a disbelieving look. “Our litany of past mistakes and abysmal combined record when it comes to long-term relationships to say nothing of all of my shitand you’re worried about – ”

“Well I’m not thirty-two anymore and it’s been six years, what if you don’t –”

“What? Want you anymore?”

“No.” She’s a terrible liar. “ _Yes_. Don’t tell me it’s ridiculous, I know that it is.”

“First, you weren’t 'thirty-two anymore' the first time round.” (At which she scowls, but even if she subtracts on her fingers he knows she’s better at math than _that_ miscalculation.) “Second, no chance in hell.” 

He reaches down to unfold her arms, tug her properly on top of him, until they’re looking at each other and her mouth is _so close_ to – 

“I know that,” she murmurs before she kisses him, slow and long and hard. “And I never had any intention of _not doing this_.” 

Her hands are demanding, pulling at his shirt until he takes it off which obscures the view of her removing her own which is only a little unfortunate. Then she hugs herself against him, skin-on-skin, the words warm in his ear, “I’ve wanted to forever.”

 

 

 

“How long do we have?” he asks her, mouth still mostly pressed against her neck but she understands him anyway.

“That depends. How much do you care about the show we do tonight?”

“Not at all.” He kisses down her chest, mouth wet against her skin until she sighs. “We’ll wing it.”

“Maybe two hours.” 

She pulls him back up to kiss her on the mouth by his hair.

 

 

 

“Charlie _is_ going to call at any moment,” she says as he settles himself between her legs.

“Mac.” He pauses with his chin resting against her thigh. “Please tell me you’re not thinking about Charlie right now.”

“I just meant.” 

Her thought stops abruptly when he kisses the inside of her knee, runs a series of feather light kisses up her thigh and he enjoys the way she shivers as he does. 

She remembers herself though, “We should turn off all means of communication. Because everyone we know and quite a few people we don’t are about to call for comment.” 

“I’m kinda busy here.” He wraps both hands around the top of her underwear and she shifts on the bed until he can tug them off. “You can get mine.”

“Oka – ”

He cuts her off with his tongue, non-verbally, because _I just know I don’t want to waste anymore time._ She startles, physically, hips jerking forward but she relaxes, swears. 

“Jesus, _fuck_ Will,” she says shakily. 

And yeah, there it is. Trademark MacKenzie McHale creative cursing. He moves his mouth a little and she tenses again, so he looks up for a cue but her eyes are closed, teeth in her lip, palming her own chest and _fuck_ , is that an image that’d keep him going the rest of his life. 

She hums out another entirely encouraging sound, but twists away from him to grab for his BlackBerry, laughing when he catches her hips and moves with her. She rolls onto her other side to turn off her own phone and with the help of gravity he gets the _oh God_ he’s really looking for.

Then it’s even _better_ because she’s properly focused, writhing underneath him, swearing under her breath and groaning loudly. Her fingers are twisting in her sheets, reaching for his hand and he gives it to her and she crushes it, which is positive feedback.

(Part of their old system, since the bedroom is the only place she’s a little shy about giving orders. And, it’s reassuring to know some things haven’t changed all that much. For example, she says _holy mother of – fuck Will_ and pulls quite hard on his hair when he puts some weight behind his tongue.)

More-than-regrettably his tongue starts to tire before she _really_ gets to begging so he gives her what she wants until she arches her back and tenses for a long moment. Then she collapses against the mattress and he busies his mouth kissing the inside of her shaking thigh. 

Laughing softly she releases her grip on his left hand, covering her face with hers, as charmingly self-conscious as he remembers.

But, it’s not all the same. She has a scar on her stomach and stories to tell, he leaves a hand between her thighs so he can still feel her twitching as he kisses up her back thinking about all of them. All the things they’ve missed. 

Her fingers twist around his and she tugs his hand up to rest clasped to her chest, kisses it first, looks at him over her shoulder. 

“You’re good at that,” she tells him. “I’d forgotten how good.”

“I’m good at lots of things.”

“I know.”

“Need more reminding?”

“Oh definitely.” She turns in his arms, kisses him, lazy and hard and wet-mouthed. Then she pulls back, licks her lips a little, and says, “I like it when you taste like me.”

And he falls out of his body a little then, loses all his senses, only comes back to himself when she’s in his lap, naked, hot little body working rhythmically against his.

 

 

 

He’s looking at her dumbstruck. And that’s always been her favorite part of doing thiswith Will: he looks at her like she’s the whole fucking world, like he’s so grateful for the moment, like he can’t really believe he’s lucky enough to have it with her. At first it used to scare the hell out of her but now –

“I’ve missed you,” she tells him, in his ear, meaning _I’ve missed this with you_.

There’s so much _want_ in her that feels like it’s all spilling out and she’s not sure she wants it to. Love is all well and good, and on some basic level sex is sex, and with him she has both, enjoys both. But there’s something else and it eats at her, she’s just so _desperate_. Just wants it to work so badly. Just wants _so much_ that it’s such a fine line between panic and pleasure and she’s been trying to swallow it down ever since she said _yes_. 

(Easiest answer she’s ever given, once she understood the question. Even if _yes_ isn’t nearly enough.)

Twenty-four fucking hours ago she’d been thinking a hundred things at once – election, resignation, lawsuit, _losing Will forever_ because one way or another Genoa was going to ruin them – and now. 

_MacKenzie Morgan McHale McAvoy_ , _that’s not going to work_ but _please, please let it work_. 

She can’t help thinking it, is so _fucking_ nervous as though they haven’t done it a hundred times before. It’s ridiculous she feels like she can’t _breathe_ over it, like her pulse, her heart is getting ahead of itself. That and it’s overwhelmingly _good_.

(So good that she knows there’s not chance she’s stopping to have the _do we need anything_ , safe-sexconversation that they’re really too old _not_ to have. She’s usually neurotically diligent about it, but … fuck it, she’ll make an awkward trip to the pharmacy later even though she knows exactly the kind of _you should be older and wiser_ look she’ll get. 

She _is_ , older and wiser, after six years of being without him and it means she wants evidence, mess, to be reminded of this all day. But she’d be embarrassed to ever say that out loud and the adolescent behind the counter wouldn’t be even capable of understanding.)

He takes a fistful of her hair and pulls at it, which hurts,but in the way that makes her shiver, skin alive all over, and it drags her out of her head until she’s looking at him looking at her. And it allays her fear, she feels exposed but that’s okay, she’s always wanted to give him all of her. 

She closes her eyes and kisses him, murmurs nonsense appreciation into his mouth and she gets a bit selfish about it, about how she rocks against him, because suddenly her body is demanding and she can feel it all over, inside, out, sliding against him because she’s so _wet_ , pressure at her clit and her teeth in her lip and his fingers at her back, digging into her spine.

And _MacKenzie Morgan McHale McAvoy_.

“Will?”

“What?” he murmurs, face in her shoulder.

“I’ll change my name if you want,” she says, sentences somewhat interrupted by the movement of her body over his, and her focus on the task. 

“Is now really the time for this conversation?” 

“You said McHale McAvoy wouldn’t work.” Her hands are insistent until he looks up at her and then she kisses him. “I’ll take your name, if you want.”

As though she could be anything other than MacKenzie McHale and he could be anything other than Will McAvoy.

“I like your name, MacKenzie McHale,” he tells her. “Wouldn’t want to ruin it. Sounds wrong any other way.”

“It sounds right when you say it,” she groans, which stops it from sounding too cute, makes it more like – she’s absolutely losing her mind to sex, which isn’t far from the truth.

So he does, _MacKenzie, MacKenzie, MacKenzie,_ and she smiles at him, his face in her hands, her nose brushing his, foreheads touching.

(Then –

_Fuck_.

His fingers, slipping against her back, skin wet with exertion and he swears again, so she moves faster and faster and –

He groans, stills her with a hand on her hip. She bows her head, kisses his shoulder and he says _I’m not just saying this because – I really love you_.

His thumb is hard and insistent until she’s rocking against it, slowly because his other hand is still on her hip and he keeps _stopping_ her with it and she wants to kill him, wants to –

Her teeth biting her lip and then not, because she cries out and it’s louder and more physical than she expects. She can’t say anything, just, trembles and breathes hard against his shoulder for a long time.)

 

 

 

She falls half-asleep as he traces patterns in the freckles on her back, falls half-asleep until he moves from her back to the inside of her knees and up her thighs and. Well. She rolls onto her back (because _I like it when you’re on top of me_ and _funny, so do I_ and _yeah it works both ways_ ) and closes her eyes and maps his position with her hands, smiling when her fingers hit is mouth by mistake, enjoys the surprise of not knowing what’s coming next. 

(Mouth at her neck, biting a little, thumb and forefinger at her chest, fingers between her legs then in her mouth and she sucks at them, tongue suggestive.)

He makes a game out of it, out of _do you still like_ –

And she starts to forget that they could have been doing this for six years if she hadn’t … if he had … _if_ , _if_ , _if_. 

Actually it doesn’t feel like all that long at all.

It’s Einsteinian, forever and _not_ at the very same time, another physical law of their universe.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

There’s a series of movements (him, her, the furniture, her computer) that wake her computer and the deluge of notifications is too great to ignore forever.

She lies on her back looking at the ceiling, breath coming fast and says, “You do it.”

So he kisses her hip, crawls out from under the sheets and turns on his phone to a similar digital insistence that they pay some attention to the outside world.

“How many?” she asks.

“In total or from people who matter?”

“Both.”

“20. But only 2 are from the office.”

“I think they thought they might be interrupting.” She rolls onto her stomach feeling content and blissed out and wanting to hold onto that feeling for a little bit longer. “Can’t think of why.”

But as soon as she sees the phone at his ear she feels a little sick and her tone changes, “How bad is it?”

“We should probably go in.”

“Too bad I don’t have a job anymore,” she remarks, stretching out and grinning up at him.

“I gave you your job back,” he says as he stands, starts parsing out their clothing.

“Technically you said no one was resigning and since you fired me …”

The look he gives her is comical.

“Besides,” she continues, “I thought now that we’re getting married I wouldn’t need to work.”

It being the 1950s and all. But on this particular day, she’s not sure she’d mind quitting her day job.

“Married,” he says, like he’s surprised.

“You hadn’t forgotten had you?” She sits up, wraps one arm around her knees and waves her other hand around until the diamond catches the light. “I’m not giving it back.”

“I’d expect nothing less.” He pulls his shirt over his head. “So you’re not coming to work?”

“Mmm.” She tips her head like she’s considering it and he leans down to kiss her.

“I’ll just tell everyone you’re auditioning for _Real Housewives_ – oof.”

She bats him with one of her pillows. Then turns professional, “Marriage equality second from the top tonight, after we do the recap. I already told Jim. Maine, Maryland and Washington all passed it and Minnesota rejected the ban.”

He flops down beside her again. “What about Puerto Rico? And when _exactly_ did you tell Jim? Because –”

“We’ll do Puerto Rico too. It was before you woke up, everyone ignored me when I told them to come in late, and when he texted I told him he could run the meeting so that we could …”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “I can’t wait to learn how you’re going to finish that sentence.”

“ _Have some time_ ,” she finishes, euphemistically.

“I only fired you because you asked so nicely,” he tells her.

“I know.”

“And I’m sorry for last night. Well, the parts that I should be sorry for, not the ones … you know what I mean.”

“Me too.” She reaches out and pats his shoulder, eyes drawn to the ring on her finger. She wonders how long it’ll be until she gets used to it. “I wasn’t exactly at my best.”

“Oh, I don’t know about tha – ”

She hits him with the pillow again. “I meant, before.”

He’s divided her life into before and after more than once. (Before she loved him and she can hardly that remember now, after he broke up with her, before _News Night 2.0_ , after … she stares at her hand again.) But each time strikes her anew, surprises her. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to happen.

Mac honestly has no clue how love is supposed to happen. Her parents and the black and white movies she saw as a child all set her up for an ideal that was never matched in reality: it’s never been at first sight, or with sweeping strings. Actually it’s hardly ever been at all. She’s spent her adult life dating one man after another and they’ve never felt _right_ to her until Will, and even that didn’t exactly play to script. Or, it _hasn’t_. Present tense.

(Just when she’d started to think of it as past.)

“I didn’t really think it was _vanity_. But we’re embroiled in a public image crisis, all of us, the whole network.” She pauses. “Still. What I said, it was … unkind. I wanted you to stop being nice to me.”

“Why would you want that?”

“Because.” She sighs. “You were only being nice to console me.”

Her guilt at making him the face of it is _still_ unbearable. And it only made it worse, that he was being too gentle with her, indulging her for weeks in a misguided effort to cheer her up.

 _Before_ she could've hit himfor it because ... she's seen the numbers, she's been out of work over less and losing the show would have meant losing the only thing he was willing to acknowledge that was keeping them together. At the time she could think of nothing more cruel than him loving her in small ways just to make her feel better. (Too close to what she wanted, but nowhere near enough.)

And now _that's_ changed too.

He’s lying horizontally on her bed, but she shifts under the covers to lie beside him anyway, their feet hanging over the edge of the mattress.

“Will.” Mac waits until he’s really looking at her. “I’ve always known you were still in love with me. But you weren’t willing to say so and this time yesterday I didn’t think you _ever_ would be. So it was cruel, to keep me … all this time, you’ve been giving me _just_ enough to keep me hanging on to something I don’t think you were sure you’d ever want.”

“So all’s not well that ends well.”

“Did you think it would be?”

“Not really.” He rests his head against her shoulder. “Though I did think we might get a few more hours of the moratorium on overthinking it. I wasn’t _trying_ to keep you hanging on Kim Wilde.”

“You were a little.”

“Not to hurt you. I was never _trying_ to hurt you.”

“Except for when you were.”

“Except for when I was,” he concedes.

“I think I know you well enough to know that most of the time you weren’t. But you’ve known for three years that one _word_ and I’d drop everything for you. So don’t tell me you weren’t keeping your options open. Whether it was intentional or not, that was – ”

“Painful?”

“Exhausting.”

It’s been an endless cycle, hoping, wanting, giving up, telling herself it didn’t matter, that she could see him every day and they could work together and that was _enough_. But there’s always been some sensible part of her that knew it was hurting her, that she couldn’t hang around for a man she was in love with forever if he wasn’t going to love her back. Even if they were doing the best news on TV.

It was hurting her, which wasn’t entirely his fault, but. He didn’t help any. So it’s just going to take some time and he’s just –

When she’s close enough to nudge him gently with her nose she finishes the thought out loud, “You’re going to have to forgive me for taking time to adjust.”

“Please come back to work,” he asks sincerely. “You know I can’t do the show or anything else half as well without you.”

“Suck up,” she murmurs, letting him kiss her, roll her on her back. She wraps her arms around his neck, so thankful, relieved, that they’re _here_.

Finally.

“Definitely.” He says it in her ear, “Twice already.”

“Get off.” She slaps his shoulder playfully. She so badly wants _not_ to be serious, to just enjoy the good and forget the past and _pretend_ that happiness can be simple. Three years and she should be good at pretending. “I have to shower.”

“That honeymoon phase was surprisingly brief,” he protests, but he does what he’s told. “Am I allowed to join you this time?”

“Do you _want_ to get to work or not?”

“That question has a complex answer. I’d much _rather_ – ”

“I know.” She gives him a small smile. “Me too. But as much as I’d _like_ to stay in bed with you all day, I’m already four hours behind. Chances are something’s happened in the world.”

“Something definitely has.” He curls his hand around her hip and pulls her closer, kisses her.

“Mmm. It has.” She hums into his mouth. “And I definitely need a break.”

He rests his forehead against hers. “At this point I’m almost all talk too.”

“So.” She pushes him back by the shoulder. “Go home and change. I’ll meet you there.”

He gives her an imploring look as she wraps herself in one of her sheets.

“I think the staff are expecting at least one of us to come to work in the same clothes as yesterday, do you really want to deprive them?”

“ _Will_.” She struggles a little when she stands, tries to pull the sheet with her, half-tripping toward the bathroom. She turns back to frown at him when he laughs at her. “I won’t change my mind if you leave me alone for thirty minutes.”

“I know that.”

“So _go_.”

“You really know how to hit it and quit it don’t you?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Who taught you that one?”

“Tess.”

 _Figures_ she thinks and her expression says so. “I’m getting in the shower.”

“Hey,” he says, which stops her in the doorway. She leans her back against the doorframe.

“You said yes.”

He looks like he can’t really believe it and she smiles because she really can’t either: “I did.”

 

 

 

 

He says it to everyone all day, _she said yes_.

In the two o’clock rundown meeting: _Tonight’s top story._  
  
To Sloan: _You can say ‘I told you so.’_  
  
To Rebecca and the lawyers: _So I don't know if you heard -_  
  
To Charlie: _Hey can you believe Mac agreed to marry me?_

( _No, it’s an unusual lapse in her judgment._ ) _  
_

 

 

 

So his exuberance makes a stark contrast to her quieter excitement, which is somewhat surprising to anyone who knows them. She is though, excited. She’s just … trying to get her head around it.

“What’s going on?” Jim finally asks her, after the last rundown when the intern’s taking food orders and she waves her off. He looks unduly concerned. (She hasn’t eaten properly in weeks; it’s not exactly a new development.)

“Nothing.” She folds her arms and looks down at her shoe. “Thank you, for taking care of things this morning.”

“I don’t want to think about why you were late any more than I’ve already had to. But. You’re welcome. I’m happy for you. And Will.”

“You did a good job.”

“After we got through a full hour of speculation.”

“Is everybody wondering what the hell happened?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“Well. Them and me both.” At the change in his expression she adds quickly, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to hear this.”

“When we pick our sides in the church, you know I’m on yours.”

“I know that.” She kicks her shoe against the carpet. “It’s not that I’m not happy. It just took me by surprise. After this long I didn’t think …” She trails off for a moment. “And all this time he’s had – ”

“The ring.”

She nods.

“Yeah, see we couldn’t figure that one out either,” Jim says. “The others thought maybe you were seeing each other in secret, but there’s no way _you_ would be able to keep something like that a secret.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to.” Before yesterday she’d have thought she’d sing it from the rooftops if he’d have her back. “But yes, you can tell everyone –”

“I hate it when you make me gossip.”

“I’m not,” she starts to protest.

“No, but you tell me things and everybody knows that you’ve told me and then they won’t leave me alone until I tell _them_.”

“Sorry.” She twists the ring around on her finger. “You know, on second thought I don’t know what you can tell everyone.”

(Will’s just saying _I got tired of waiting_ but her version of that sounds far more pathetic _– I’ve been waiting for years and I’d have waited forever._ If this is her fairytale then she’s the princess in the ivory tower, passively waiting out once upon a time for happily ever after, and even Disney isn’t making _that_ movie anymore.

And his account is a little rose-tinted. A ring he bought just to make her think … to make her feel guilty, as though she’s spent a second feeling anything else. She understands, really. That what she did was a terrible, awful thing to do. That he wanted to hurt her back. She wonders if he knows how good he was at doing it.

But she can’t tell _that_ story, even to Jim.)

So she changes the subject, to the other thing that’s bothering her; an earlier conversation with Rebecca and the lawyers and how now they’re going to have to dredge her past for anything else that makes her look bad.

“Dantana’s lawyers know about Islamabad.” She half-laughs. “As though that’s the worst of it. And I’ve never told Will. Now I have to and that means telling him all of it and – ”

“It’s hard to talk about. I know.”

“It’s _impossible_ to talk about. I’ve tried before, to tell him. But.” She shrugs. “I can never think of the words.”

(Right back in the beginning, three hours in to what started as the same argument about the young, inexperienced staff before they’d been distracted by everything that had happened in the world since she’d last seen him – Obama, the economic crisis, the highlights of all three Superbowls, despite her protests – and he’d made an opening for her, so expertly that she wouldn’t have noticed if she didn’t see him do it on television five nights a week. But she’d ignored it. Not because she didn’t _want_ to tell him, there was just no way of telling it.)

“He’ll understand.”

“I just wanted to let you know, they’re going to ask you about it.”

“I’ll say what I’ve always said.”

“You can’t. If you lie now, it could be a criminal offence.”

“I’ll say what I’ve always said,” he repeats.

She opens a mouth but he cuts her off: “And you won’t talk me out of it.”

“I know.” She sighs. “Say what you want. To the others. About me and Will. You don’t have to lie for me.”

“You’re happy?”

At that she can’t help but smile. Despite all her others she has no reservations in this, the obvious answer, “Yeah.”

“Then that’s what I’ll say.”

Mac worries that somehow, with everything that’s happened, she’s inadvertently taught him to be selective with his facts.

 

 

 

 

She catches Will in his office fifteen minutes before air. He’s halfway to lighting a cigarette, rehearsing something in his head, miming the rhythm of it with his hands and moving his mouth unconsciously and he puts the lighter down when he sees her and she’s indescribably fond of him, at all of it.

(It aches in her chest and it takes her a while to place the feeling; she’s become so unaccustomed to joy.)

“You’d think by now I’d be confident saying _no new news_ but every time we put it in a script I get a little nervous. No new – say it ten times fast.”

“That’s your job not mine.” Her hand smooths over his shirt and she watches it, marveling a little, at being _allowed_ to touch him. She stares at the ring on her finger too; new game, new rules and she’s not sure what any of them are yet.

“So we’re still a no on me telling our national primetime audience that I love you?”

“As much as I’d _hate_ that, yes. Although Charlie’s been annoying me all day about a press strategy so don't worry, the public are going to know soon enough.”

“Someone’s going to find out sooner or later, and in lightof the lawsuit – this way we control the story. It makes sense. Is it because you’re ashamed of me?”

“Not _ashamed_ exactly.” She smirks, pulls him closer by his tie, something she’s definitely missed doing. “I suppose you’ll do.”

Then she pats his shoulder instead of kissing him. (She’s never felt entirely comfortable with overt displays of affection at work and particularly today she feels like everyone is watching them.)

“I would like to tell my parents myself though. If my mother _reads_ it before I tell her –”

“Hell to pay,” he finishes for her.

She nods.

“So what brings you here? Business or pleasure?”

“I had a minute. Just _one_ ,” she adds the caveat, stifling the more interesting of his ideas.

"And?"

"I'm exhausted," she admits.

Mac feels like she's been to hell and back: six hours of election coverage and adrenalin on no sleep, food taking second seat to guilt because her stomach was too busy feeling sick over the uncertainty and the _mistake_. (A fucking _war crime_.) Losing her job, getting her job back, _Will_ and finally tripping over all the uneven ground between them since the retraction.

And the ring was a joke but he didn't return it and ...

She's like a fucking SAT vocab list of human emotion: miserable, guilt-ridden, hurt, angry, jaded, surprised, overjoyed, relieved, dizzy, the happiest she's been in her _life_ because he said _thank God_ and she has been, ever since.

But there's reality to contend with: their pitiful numbers, Dantana's lawsuit and _will you marry me?_ Not _I forgive you_ , not _let's give it another go_ , but _will you marry me_ and for a cynic Will has a hell of a habit of getting ahead of himself, romantically speaking, or at least he always has with her. She didn't really anticipate _that_ being his first step forward after _years_ of hurting her back.

He seems to have elected to be happy and ignore the rest, _we just decided to_ , and it's ... alarmingly Zen, for him. She wonders when he got to be so even keeled, in charge of morale and all that.

"Everything's gone topsy turvy," she murmurs.

"Long day Alice?"

"And it's not over yet. Just give me a minute.” She hugs him, and God, she’s missed him, missed this place to rest. He hugs her back and keeps his mouth shut for a change.

“Change it to no _further_ news,” she murmurs, burying her face in his shoulder and for the first time in months she feels like _it’s all right_. They’ll fix it, put it back together _together_.

(Mac has always thought she could make a difference; she’s been an idealist her entire life and nobody ever told her there were things she couldn’t do, so she grew up believing that there weren’t, that she could single-handedly change the world. But after their very first show, she knew, she had to do it with him and all the time she wasn’t it felt like she didn’t know how to anymore. Looking back she doesn’t know why it took her so long to figure out she was in love with him.)

They go on the air to tell of everything that’s wrong but she can’t help but think all is right in the world.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

He waits for her after the show, aimlessly browsing the Internet. It starts off with something legitimate but he can’t remember what it was; he's reading The Telegraph’s world news online and wondering how the fuck the vortex that is hypertext siphoned off another hour of his life when she interrupts him by knocking on the door. When he looks up she gives him a cautious smile before burying her teeth in her lip.

“Did you know that on Monday for the first time in living memory no one was shot, stabbed or otherwise violently assaulted in the whole of New York City?” he asks, because Mac looks far too worried and it seems best to stick to familiar territory.

“I didn’t.”

“Gun crime is down, and we’re on track to see the lowest murder rate on record since the 60s. Petty crime is up but so marginally that it might end up declining.”

“Since when are you the optimist?”

He leans back in his chair. “Since you’ve been the cynic.”

“I’m not…” She plays with the strap of her bag. “Being cynical about it.”

He makes a face that says he doesn’t believe her.

“Any of it,” she adds, at his expression. “Can we go home now?”

“We?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how this works.” She tries to tease, but he can read the tension in her, and there’s more than one conversation to be had about _how_ _this works_.

“I came prepared,” she adds, hoping to assuage him, gesturing with the shoulder laden with an overnight bag.

“Okay.”

When he meets her in the doorway he reaches out and takes the bag from her, not quite anticipating the weight of it. He knows from experience that she’s formidable when it comes to packing, can fit more in a carry-on than Mary fucking Poppins but somehow he still wasn’t expecting it.

A few of the staff are still working when they cross the floor. She tells them goodnight and says they should go home and he watches her, den mother and mentor who sees the best in everyone and brings it out and puts it together – he’s always been in awe of her for that.

( _You were spectacular tonight_. One of these nights he’ll tell her what the message said. He’ll tell her and she’ll probably hit him for it but it won’t matter anymore.)

She joins him in front of the elevators as he moves the bag from one shoulder to another.

“What have you gotin this thing?”

“Just a few essentials, if you want me to stay with you. And I’m not being cynical about it. Why do you think I’ve got half my wardrobe in there?”

“There is no way this is half your wardrobe.”

“I’m glad you already know that so I don’t have to break it to you gently.”

(A sentiment he agrees with; there are so many things she already knows and that makes it so much easier.)

“Generously, I give it five percent.”

“There’s only one pair of shoes.”

“Half a percent. Exactly how much of this is going to end up all over my bathroom?” he asks, as the elevator doors close.

“You’re going to _hate_ it,” she promises.

“Actually I don’t think I will.”

She gives him a look that says _don’t be cute_ even though he’s _not_. He’s trying to think of a way to say that – _I’m not going to take it back when confronted with the reality of you_ – when she takes his hand.

Her smile is conspiratorial, like they’re breaking the rules and it reminds him of how she used to flirt with him, back in the beginning when she was his newly minted EP and they were still pretending they were too professional to indulge in each other.

She takes his hand and it is kinda weird but entirely wonderful, the latest in their sideshow attraction life.

(Nothing really goes the way it’s supposed to, but their band of misfits and freaks makes for a family all the same.)

 

 

 

Mac knows his apartment; nothing has changed even if everything is different. So she does remember where all the light switches are but she stands by the dining table in the dark anyway, turns off the blue glare of the television and just _stands_ there while he’s distracted in the kitchen. It’s a blessed relief, to be still and in solitude.

(Just for a moment. Just to catch her breath.)

“Mac?”

He turns on the lights and she blinks at him.

“Do you remember the first time you kissed me?” she asks.

Right here on a Sunday afternoon, forever ago. She remembers that it was in May, early, before Memorial Day because they’d spent _that_ weekend in bed.

She’d been scared then too, had such an awfulcrush on him and no idea what would come of it. She was so _hopeful_ though. (He’s always made her hopeful.) As it turns out, none of it happened like she imagined it might back then.

He smirks at her, but nostalgically. “Not my favourite memory of you on that table.”

There had been an entirely obvious quip about _eating out_ and they’d never actually made it to dinner.

She smiles.

That’s the problem though. Everywhere she looks is so full of ghosts.

(She remembers kissing him at midnight on New Year’s Eve, sitting on the kitchen counter. And a year later, crying uncontrollably while he told her to get out. Being so impatient to get through the door, stumbling into the hall, being pressed up against the wall. And being let in by the building manager, finding him collapsed and covered in his own blood, thinking he was _dead_ and that she’d never get to say – there’s too much history.)

She decides then and there that they’re getting a new place, even if she doesn’t tell him until much later. The juxtaposition of good and bad everywhere she turns is something she can live without.

He takes her hand and pulls her into a hug, murmuring, “Get out of your head. Or at least tell me what’s going on in there.”

“I was so happy.” It’s strange to her that after all these years when she thinks of it she still feels sad, is still mourning it. “The first time you kissed me, the first … all of it. We were so _good_. I’m so sorry that I ruined all that.”

“Safe to say, we both could have done a few things differently.”

“I take back what I said about not telling you, if I could do it again. I had to tell you, because you only would have been marrying me because you didn’t know, if I hadn’t.” She pauses, chooses her words carefully. “If I hadn’t told you you’d only ever have loved who you thought I was. If I could do it over, I wouldn’t have done it at all and I’ve hated myself for hurting you. But I had to tell you.”

She pulls back, palms resting at his shoulders to look at him. “Please don’t forget that I’m not perfect. You’re _so_ happy and all I can think is –”

“I think we’ve both been made painfully aware of our shortcomings lately.”

She rolls her eyes as she nods her agreement. “That’s true. All I’m saying is, we’re not going to get it right all of the time. I know I’m getting it wrong right now.”

“You’re not getting anything wrong. I didn’t ask you to force your hand; I know it probably seems ... a little crazy. But you asked me if I was in –”

She frowns, confused. “What?”

“Two and a half years ago. That bit’s not important. You asked me if I was in and –”

“You said yes.”

“I said yes. And when I said it –”

“Two and a half years ago? Just how long have you been planning this?”

“Mac. There’s never been anyone but you. You and I and just about everybody else knows that. It’s been six years; I’m tired of being angry with you, I’m tired of hurting you, I’m tired of _being_ hurt by it. I’m tired of pretending there’s even a chance it could be anybody else.” He shrugs. “It’s been six years and _still_ , it’s you. So I just _stopped_.”

“The little boy shredding paper.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t understand you at all.”

“Nobody does. Even I don’t understand myself.”

“We were talking about the show,” she says, like she’s correcting him. "Two and a half years ago."

He looks at her in rebuttal and she has to grant him that there’s never really been a clear distinction, right from the start they worked together so well and it made her love him and love made it _work_.

“I asked you if you were in and you said yes.”

She remembers the moment, how it still felt good every time she heard his voice on the other end of the line and how difficult it was to ignore the hope that sparked and died all in the space between the ring and the dial tone.

It was early days and every time they talked like that she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. It was just like the first time. Except in all the ways it was so obviously and painfully different.

“I don’t want you to even consider the possibility that I’m not. Ever again.” He leans toward her; they’re looking at each other so intently and she’s fucking _terrified_ and she hates that but it’s thrilling. “So it doesn’t have to be right away –”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t want that. After everything, I don’t know what it is we’d be waiting for. But you just said it: it’s been _six_ _years_. Can we really just –”

“Pick up where we left off?”

“We’re not even doing that.”

But maybe it’s not so far off.

“What I said to you, when you found out about the Fox offer, it was all – just because I didn’t actually have the ring doesn’t mean …” He pauses then just cuts to the heart of it: “I was going to ask.”

“I know.” Because she _did_ and that was what started this whole mess. “I was going to say yes.”

“So I think we threw out the book on this years ago. We can make up the rest as we go along.”

“Okay.” She nods and breathes and _they can do it together_ and: “Just for a little while you might have to keep reminding me of that.”

 

 

 

She sets about making herself completely at home in his apartment, and he watches her, not caring one bit that she’s ruthless in clearing space in his closet and unapologetic about occupying more than her share of the counter in the bathroom.

(He has more space than he needs anyway, and it’s always been her that he wanted to fill it.)

Mac tends to be tidier in theory than in practice but she always starts off meticulously organized. It’s just that life gets in the way so things slip little by little until her entire system is unrecognizable. He has fun helping that along, messing up all her good work in the bathroom by pressing her up against the counter and she rolls her eyes at him a little in the mirror.

“Is this how you want to work things through?” she asks as she turns to face him, pushing herself up onto the counter and wrapping her arms around his neck. “In every room of the house?”

“Are you making the suggestion? Because you know I’ll take you up on the offer.”

“Well I’m sure that would at least be thoroughly enjoyable if not entirely effective.”

He lets her have the last word, kisses her and then everything feels like it’s happening so fast: pulse in double time and her hands, everywhere, pulling him against her then reaching up under his shirt; her mouth so demanding and so encouraging whenever he touches her; her head falling hard against the mirror and bottles and jars and tubes pushed to the ground in her rush to grip at the edge of the counter, leverage, so she can rock against his fingers, thighs tight against his hand.

It’s frantic, because now that she’s _here_ it occurs to him that she could _leave_ , that it’s real, and if it’s real then they’ve started something and if they’ve started something it could end, rings and promises and all else aside. And he just _needs_ her, is so much better with her.

But he knows they need to stop with desperate acts. (For one thing, he can’t propose to her every time he’s worried she’s finally wised up and maybe he went too big, too soon on that one. Not a whole lot of room to move.) They’re doing it for all the right reasons, but there are some of the wrong ones too. And those have a tendency to be louder: neuroses and insecurities and fears.

She falls still, traps his wrist with both her hands, says it with her mouth still resting against his cheek, “I want this to last.”

Which works on two levels. He lets her tug his hand from under her skirt.

Her fingers weave through his. She slides to the floor and leads him by the hand.

 

 

 

He’s sitting on the end of the bed, holding both her hands. She pulls them free to start unbuttoning her shirt but he stops her, stills them, runs his thumbs over her knuckles, stopping at the ring.

 _She said yes_.

One day he thinks he’ll learn to ignore the part of him that has no idea why she did.

“Hang on.” He rests her hands on his shoulders then reaches for her waist. “You’re incredible.” Each button reveals more of her, all of it breathtaking, literally. He tries to steal it back, mouth against her stomach and she gasps, like she’s pleasantly surprised by the sensation. “Let me enjoy you.”

(And he fully intends to, enjoy every inch of her.)

Mac blushes, not in the face but her neck, her chest; flattery will get you everywhere but, God, it’s true. He’s a masochist for going without her so long.

He removes her shirt and finds the zip of her skirt, face pressed to her stomach, her arms hugging him to her, hand stroking his hair.

She’s been padding around in stocking feet, one of his favourite things to watch, the way she slides a little sometimes, like a child.

(He's always liked it when she takes her shoes off in his apartment, like she’s planning on staying, at least for a while.)

When her skirt falls to the floor she steps back, out of reach, to remove her stockings herself leaving his hands disappointingly empty. He ruined _one_ pair, _once_. She’s either never forgiven him or it’s just easier.

She comes back though and he fills them again with her when sinks down into his lap, mostly undressed, and he can’t decide where he most wants to touch her. Everywhere, all at once, and it really doesn’t matter as long as she’s close.

He settles for her back, reaches up to unclasp her bra with a degree of difficulty that he really shouldn’t experience after this many years and this much practice but it’s stubborn. She’s wearing matching underwear, an intentional decision that she made for _him_ and … six years, at least two of them were martyrdom; he can’t remember any reason that’d make it worth it.

Hurt and betrayal and _everything_ sure, but being with her is so much better than _not_ and why did it take him so long to figure that one out?

He removes her bra and rests his forehead at her sternum, head bowed and her fingers keep stroking at his hair, until they’re encouraging his chin up to meet her mouth and she’s kissing him.

They’re quiet and it’s soft and she brushes the fingers of one hand to his lips to keep him from kissing her again, make space for the word:

“Slow,” she says and he nods and he sucks on her fingers and she curls them in his mouth.

 

 

 

“Are you _falling asleep_?” he asks her, later, on top of her, and she hums in amusement at the question.

“No.” She shakes her head, eyes closed. She opens them though, to prove it.

“You’re somewhere else.”

“I’m right here,” she assures him, stretches out under him, arches her back. _Right here_ and _right there_ and she thinks she says that out loud too but … it’s just that it’s dreamlike, languid and perfect and it doesn’t feel like it’s really happening even though it _does_ and it _is_. (Oh, it is.)

Like she’s weightless, except for where his weight is on her and where she’s touching herself and that’s electricity right down to her feet and his sheets feel so alive under her, friction tickling at the soles when she tries for purchase, toes curling.

But she is right there, so _aware_ of everything, his breathing, hers, that she’s gasping, that he’s saying her name (in full, always in full like this, _MacKenzie_ ) like it’s a poem or a prayer that becomes a plea and –

“I know you said slow, but this is going to have to be a little faster for me.”

Nodding. _Anything for you._ (Another thing she may or may not have said.)  
 _  
_All these details, foregrounded in her mind, but they’re disjointed, she’s hazy, it’s too much and she has to close her eyes. Just for a moment.

Then she pulls him down on top of her so there’s no room for her hands between them. She reaches up over her head and takes his instead, grips tight as she lifts her hips from the mattress, smiling, smiling, smiling.

(Because he was right and _this_ is not the part they’re going to fuck up.)

“Look at me,” she instructs. It catches somewhere in her throat the first time though, and she feels like she might cry. Not in sadness or even happiness just that there’s nowhere else for it all to go when he does. She thinks maybe he’s seeing all of her and wants her anyway and – she has to bite her lip until he kisses her.

(Maybe they won’t fuck it up at all. He’s always made her hopeful.)

He kisses her, his tongue at her teeth where they’re in her lip until she opens her mouth to him and then flirting with hers. She cranes her neck to kiss him harder, her fingers tightening around his and her hips rocking faster until she feels like what all of her is saying is _harder_ and yet …

“Are you being polite?” she asks, amused. Because that’s what it feels like, and at an absurd time for etiquette, naked and hard and moving inside her and she feels exactly like that greedy time of drunk, when she’s two drinks down and all that matters is _more_ ; fire in her stomach and warmth flooding all her limbs and a pleasant _nothing_ in her head, except that greed. So her body is wanting, slick, and a little bit intoxicated by it all. She’s past politeness and fast approaching _need._ “You don’t have to be,” she tells him.

“Is this working for you?”

“Yes.” She runs her fingers through his hair, holds his face in her hands. “But not like I want it to work for you.” _Let me do this for you_. “Let go for me.”

 _I want you to_. And _I want you_. And _I love you_. (All things he desperately needs to hear, her bird with a broken wing of a lover. He needs more care than he pretends he does and all she’s ever wanted is to love him enough. _Let me do this for you._ )

So she wraps her legs around him, talks hot in his ear, affection welling right through her when he closes his eyes and just _listens_ to her, recreating their usual sensory disconnect. She watches him and he listens to her, 8 to 9, five nights a week. And she talks him through it just like she does then too.

 

 

 

“I’m not sure I can,” she starts to tell him (because for all that it’s making her feel hot all over it was _three times_ this morning and she _knows_ him, it’ll bruise his ego a little if he can’t …) but he wets his fingers between her legs anyway, gentle. She inhales sharply, tenses and grips the sheets and it’s not _unpleasant_ exactly but she’s sensitive and it stings.

“You want me to stop?”

She shakes her head. “No. But you’ve already been quite thorough.”

“Right.”

So he just-barely touches her, fingers so slow and –

“God,” she groans and she’s starting to want _more_. He kisses down her neck, down her chest (tongue very briefly licking at her nipple) and he’s going to use his mouth in place of fingers, which might be more delicate but she doesn’t wantit because –

“Kiss me,” she says, tugging at his hair until he does and her hips are more insistent as it becomes heated, all stolen air and tongues becoming less shy.

She whimpers into the mess of their mouths, hands on his face, trembling and he stops tracing circles with his fingers, just holds them still against her so she can control it, short little thrusts against his hand and all the while he’s kissing her.

It doesn’t overwhelm her. The whole thing is quiet and builds slowly and just hums through her lazily and she reaches down to take his hand, brings it to her lips, kisses it.

(She could probably tease it further, get more out of it, but this is enough. Her fingers tighten around his and her insides throb, grateful at the memory. So it’s gentle but she’s still heavy all over with satisfaction, yawning, stretching out like a cat.)

“You’re sore?” he asks.

“I am and thank you for that. But if you wanna go another round I’m sure I can find some other way to satisfy you.”

“No. I just want to – touch you.” He trails the fingers of one hand over the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the hard of her rib cage. “God I missed you.”

She’s already said the same thing to him, but she nods agreement anyway. Her missing him has felt like an ache in her bones, dull, always there under everything else. And she hasn’t quite forgotten how to feel it yet, even though he’s right in front of her.

“Will?” she murmurs without opening her eyes. “I need to tell you something.”

Because now feels like the best time, she’s so relaxed and content and it doesn’t even feel like it’ll ruin it, dragging the worst of her past into bed with them.

“About Pakistan. And some other things that happened, while I was away.”

“I know. I read the complaint.”

“That’s not really all of it.” Just what Nina Howard was onto months ago, about the protest and _she_ was the one who was stabbed, she was the only one of the crew even remotely close to _nearly killed._ She thinks he probably knows all about that too, the way his hands start gravitating toward her scar. Still. “Don’t you want to hear it from me?”

It changed her. Not for the worse, not in the end. But more than she ever imagined or even realized at the time: it was something she needed to heal from, and she has the sense that telling _him_ … that’s the last part, that puts it to rest.

(He’s divided her life into before and after more than once.)

“Anything you want to tell me.” He kisses her forehead and lies to her a little: “I’ve always wanted to hear.”

Mac lets him get away with it, because it’s late and it sounds nice and somewhere deep down she thinks he does mean it. Actually she knows he does; he’s never really hidden it well, just stubbornly refused to admit it, a truth they both know.

So she tells him, about going to a war zone and coming back from it and the three years away from him and the three more they shared but didn’t share. She feels like she’s changing shape under his hands, words and worries and old wounds falling away as she tells him all her hidden truths and he tells her some of his, things she finds she already knew, about three years of black and white, of grey, and how since she came back he started seeing in colour again.

How much further could they be from those past selves? It’s been _hours_ and then _a day_ , because they talk all night, but it’s an age. Forever. And at first light, when sailors navigate by sun and stars, they navigate by touch, eyes closed, almost sleeping.

In a half-dream, she twists the ring around on her finger and sees all of the forevers yet to come.

 

 _This is the solstice, the still point_  
 _of the sun, its cusp and midnight,_  
 _the year’s threshold_  
 _and unlocking, where the past_  
 _lets go of and becomes the future;_  
 _the place of caught breath, the door_  
 _of a vanished house left ajar._  
\- Shapechangers in Winter, Margaret Atwood ([x](http://recycledstars.tumblr.com/post/106609563098)) _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year! Believe you me, I am _so glad_ not to be bringing this WIP with me into 2015. Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and kudos and I've hope you've enjoyed reading and that this wraps it all up with a neat, tidy bow.
> 
> As is my custom: [notes on the writing of/factual details](https://littlebitsofmad.livejournal.com/2053.html) and [writing playlist](http://open.spotify.com/user/recycledstars/playlist/20PNBiQACvCUbDJO22SDi9) \- because why not?


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